Meeting organizers, project leaders, and/or business managers (hereafter “meeting facilitators”) frequently need to communicate with employees, consultants, and/or vendors involved in various projects. Projects and/or sub-tasks associated with projects may include the efforts and/or cooperation of employees, consultants, and/or vendors located within geographically separated parts of one or more organizations (e.g., company, business, not-for-profit organization, etc.). As a result, conference calls are a particularly useful management tool for meeting facilitators.
At the beginning of a conference call, participants typically call a telephone number and verbally introduce themselves to the other participants already engaged in the conference call. As the number of participants increases, the existing participants must strive to remember a large number of voices and their associated names. Additionally, those participants that call in to the conference late (e.g., after initial introductions have been completed) may not have the opportunity to hear participant introductions. Thus, they may not recognize who is speaking during subsequent times of the conference call. As a result, it may be necessary to interrupt the conference call meeting and interject various questions about who was (just) speaking.
The conference call allows the meeting facilitator and other project members to discuss project plans, project issues, and/or assign additional project tasks designed to accomplish various project objectives. Particular participants that are assigned action items (e.g., project tasks and/or sub-tasks) may verbally acknowledge acceptance of the task(s), communicate task objectives and deliverables, and/or communicate task start and/or end dates for which the task should be completed. In such circumstances, the meeting facilitator or another participant maintains the burden of taking meeting notes and documenting which conference call participants are responsible for the various assigned tasks. This burden is particularly difficult when the number of participants is high. Such administrative tasks may distract the meeting facilitator and/or other note-taking participants from applying his or her talents to project problem solving and/or other expertise. Such tasks may also consume meeting time.